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Monday, March 7, 2011

So Deathwish in January was a pretty epic event. The theme was Comic book showdown called "Showdown Deathtropolis". It was amazing first I got to design the flyers, second i had to design my girl a costume, and third I got to dress up as the Darkness :). So all of this was an interesting adventure, both my girl and I had the challenge of finding an appropriate character to portray, biggest problems being she has short hair and long bangs and I have long hair. After a lot of debating and picking through comic characters we finally decided to go with two somewhat anti-heroes.

So to fill in those that aren't comic geeks :). We decided she would go as Razor.

"Razor was the top-selling female heroine comic throughout the nineties. She has starred in a mini-series with The Crow, in which they fight an enemy called Pain."

"Nicole is the oldest daughter of an LAPD detective who is murdered when she is a child. Her younger sister Jacklyn was abducted during this incident by the crime lord Roman Von Drake. Nicole grows up to become a stealth fighter by night who protects the defenseless on the lawless streets of Chinatown, whilst helping disaffected teens during the day. Eventually she comes to the attention of Von Drake after disrupting his organization for quite some time. "

Honestly when said and done each artist that has drawn Razor has added there own spin on her costume and gauntlets, so trying to pin down a design to go with was kind of a pain, but in the long run we went with the most common idea of the top and a variation on the pants that would work with her dancing up on stage.

As for me I decided on The Darkness honestly I've always loved the comic, read it when it first cam out and tried to keep up with it all these years. Besides the fact that finding a picture of Jackie Estacado in his normal street clothes I almost had the look without even making a costume :). A little info on The Darkness if you don't already know....

"The comic first appeared in 1996 and enjoyed an initial period of relative success during the Top Cow/Image Comics boom of the late 1990s. However, Top Cow was forced to "re-launch" the comic in 2002 after sales began to drop. The Darkness has sold over 1 million copies worldwide."

"The Darkness is one of the two primal forces of the universe. A male entity of dark which represents chaos. The Darkness is engaged in an eternal war with his natural, female counterpart, The Angelus. However he and The Angelus created a sexual truce and they became the parents of The Witchblade. The Darkness chooses males as its hosts as it passes on from father to son, leaving the previous user (and taking his life) as his first child is conceived. The Darkness then awakens within the host on his 21st birthday. Darkness hosts can create anything they desire with The Darkness, even sentient beings, but anything they make will crumble to dust in the light. The Darkness is quite deadly allowing the user to manipulate the shadows/dark to call forth darkling minions to do his bidding and even survive gunshots. It can also be used to maul and feed on people. The Darkness does not function except in the dark, but some users can also manipulate this by creating their own shadows/darkness (smoke-grenades, turning off lights in a room, being underground, etc.)." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Darkness_%28comics%29

Again each artist has his own slight difference with the costume but in general the costume has notable features. In the long run these are the two pictures I took the most influence from.

If you want to get technical about it my hair is much longer than Jackie's which would put it more in the vein of Ian Nottingham controlling the darkness which was the crossover between The Darkness and Witchblade. However that's why I simple said I was dressed as Darkness, not Jackie :P.

So on with the costumes...As usual I started with her's as it was much more important that her costume be done for the event seeing as she would be up on stage and had to dress the part, mine, in this case, is more of a "if I have the time to get it done." So once we had decided on what exactly we were doing with the costume it was a matter of figuring out how the hell to make a drawn costume come to life, fit well, and allow her to dance. I started out with the top as it, in the long run, took the most time. It was a lot of "what material, how's it going to fit" etc. After her being very patient with my "can you try it on again I have to see if blah blah blah" I finally got it done. In the process we also had to make the pants. We went to the thrift store with the thought of "if we can find something close it will make the job a lot easier in the long run" now we weren't exactly planning on finding faux leather pants honestly it was more of a gamble, but as it turned out we actually found two pairs and one fit her perfectly, Major find :). So a lot of seam ripping and a lot of test fitting and hemming later her costume was finished, and I have to saw it turned out wonderful. So here are a few pictures, there will be more at the end of this post.

As far as my costume, I had been slowly picking away at it when I had the spare time to fit it in, between fittings and such. I had started on the gauntlets well before any of the rest with the thought of "at very least I could have one of the gauntlets and have the effect." After I had made one the second one came pretty easy honestly. The only part that nearly stumped me was the small round green "jewels" that were in every version of the costume. After a lot of looking and not finding anything suitable I searched through my random bits and craft stuffs and, long store short, a bit of model train "water", some food coloring, and some empty soda cans later I had what I wanted :).

As for the rest, I had mostly wanted to try and do it on the cheap so I found a "turtle neck" shirt and an old jersey at the thrift store that happened to be the right color I was looking for total price at that point was maybe $6. I found an old pair of black pants for the bottom half, so that part ended up free. After a lot of over thinking it I realized I wanted to add a bit of the "comic book bulk" to the costume, so then came the interesting adventure in effectively making a muscle suit for the top half, it also added some of the costume depth that I was looking for. So after getting a lot of the bulk stuff done, basically the look of the shirt and the pants, it was a mad rush on the last 2 days to get the details done. Overall, I think it turned out pretty successful :) better than some I have seen. Just a quick note, as far as the colors go, I know some would argue that it's not green, seeing as some of the drawings of the darkness his costume looks mostly green and yellow but personally ... it's The Darkness, I'm sorry but I think it should be black as a bulk of the costume. So on with the pictures (since that is what most of you want to see anyhow. ;)

Picture of the stage Razor on the left, Poison Ivy on the right

Perfect timing for an unintentional Comic book pose :D

Realized after the night was done that we honestly hadn't gotten many shots of me in costume. Luckily a few other people did :)

My girl and a good friend of ours as Ms. Marvel

I think there were about 3 pictures being taken at this particular moment

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About Me

I suppose I am an artist at heart, fascinated with steampunk and dieselpunk recently.In the last year have been creating wondrous steam punk guns, weapons, picture frames and armor. I would like to share this with those out there that may appreciate it.